Crystal Hefner posted a screenshot of an Instagram DM to Jessica Biel asking her to "please reconsider" playing a fictional wife of Hugh Hefner in Searchlight's "Playmates," according to Deadline.
The DM became the press statement. Hefner, who married Hugh Hefner in 2012 and stayed until his death in 2017 at 91, sent Biel a message: "Please reconsider playing Hugh Hefner's 'wife' if this film intends to romanticise him or the world of Playboy." Then she screenshotted it and posted it, so a private message to a stranger is now being read at the front page by millions. The DM is the newest press release, and it does not need a media kit.
The film in question is a coming-of-age story by Lorraine Nicholson about a 13-year-old for whom the Playboy Mansion is a "second home." Bill Pullman plays Hefner. Lily-Rose Depp is in it. Biel's wife is fictional, not based on any of the three real ones. Nearly ten years after his death, the only person with a grievance still lives in the house he built.
In the message, Crystal said she "was actually his wife, and I experienced sexual, emotional, financial and physical abuse in that relationship." She ended by asking everyone involved to "listen to the women who lived it" before Hollywood turns the place back into nostalgia. That is the most honest sentence about this industry. Nostalgia is the product, and the women are the packaging.
So far the DM has no reply. Searchlight is making the movie, and Biel is keeping the role. If you cannot answer a DM, let the screenshot do the work, because the machine reads it as "the widow has a point" and files it under content. YOUR TURN: If a movie about your house is in the works, do you DM the cast, or do you hire a PR team?
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